Cards made of paper or plastics have been used as identification cards such as a membership certificate, a student's identification card, an employee identification card, etc., or a ticket, a business card, a tag, etc. To these cards, printing or writing (processing) of various information is carried out by a printer or a magnetic type card reader writer, etc.
Processed cards are generally discharged (released) to an output stacker, and stacked up (accommodated). The stacker is a box state member an upper surface of which is generally opened, and a number of the cards to be accommodated is determined by the height (depth) of the stacker. When a working efficiency is considered, it is desired to increase a number of the cards to be accommodated. In such a case, a height of the stacker is required to be heightened, accordingly, a discharging position of the card of the processing apparatus is also required to be heightened. As a result, the height of the apparatus becomes high, which contradicts to the demand to make the apparatus compact.
In the case of a desktop type small-sized printer, for example, a number of accommodable sheets is 30 sheets to 75 sheets in the case of a card made of a plastic of JIS standard with a thickness of 0.76 mm. Incidentally, an input stacker which sends a card into a printer generally has a larger capacity for a number of the cards to be accommodated than that of an output stacker (for example, 200 sheets). This is because, the input stacker can be easily made high to the upper direction (space), but the output stacker cannot be made high than the card discharge port of the apparatus since the card falls with its own weight. Incidentally, in recent years, a size of the printer tends to be small, and the height of the card discharging port becomes lower.
If a number of the discharged cards exceeded the capacity of the stacker, the discharged cards collide with each other and the discharging operation becomes impossible whereby it causes failure of the apparatus or the cards might be damaged. Also, the cards that exceeded the capacity scatter at around the stacker, and it is necessary to collect the scattered cards with hands and stack up. Here, when the order of the cards has been decided, the order might be disturbed when the cards are collected. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the stacker by a person at the timing of filling the cards near to the brim.
If the cards are overflowed from the stacker, even if the scattered cards are collected, the order of the cards is disturbed. Then, it is necessary to permute the cards to the correct order, or, to confirm the order, it is necessary to check the card preparation data and the actual cards, so that it takes time and becomes a work to likely cause errors.